Living in whooville means you get overexposed to LOLUVA propaganda. It's something you come to grips with as a Hokie living in this town. It's like walking through a cow pasture.....you know what's there, and you just protect yourself from it by wearing stuff that you can wash off easily. One of the purveyors of such....um...fertilizer...is the Daily Progress. Today's paper had an article about how the freshmen are adapting to Broncoworld (you can find the full article here).
In this article, there are two quotes that caught my eye. First from Marques Hagans, WR coach:
Their heads are spinning, but that's why they're first-years," said receivers coach Marques Hagans. "They're eager to learn, but board application and field application is completely different. We're just getting them contaminated in what we do and getting them used to how we operate.
(emphasis mine)
So we've learned that wahooism is a disease (possibly communicable?), which is something we've all suspected for years.
Second, apparently Bronco doesn't think much of his incoming freshman class. Discussing the freshmen, who were indoctrinated during a four week summer mini-camp (I guess that's what we could call it), Bronco doesn't think that it's likely that they can contribute during fall camp.
Without that, they have no chance," Mendenhall said. "So it gave them a chance. We have a little less than a third that haven't qualified to practice yet, so without them being here for four weeks, that number would have been probably two-thirds or more.
So nearly a third of their incoming class hasn't "qualified" for practice yet. And he doesn't think they have much more than a chance to practice??! It's going to be really interesting to see Bronco-ball this year....in kind of the same way you can't turn away from a train wreck.
Comments
How can they not qualify for practice? That seems like an irresponsible way to go about fall camp especially for a perennially bad program like LOLuva. Either way, hilarious.
Exactly my thought. Beggars can't be choosers.
You suck, and in order to help you get better, we're not gonna let you practice
There's gotta be something more to this...
It's has to come from his experience at BYU, where they would get older kids as freshmen or kids that would leave after the 1st or 2nd year on a mission.
It must. I don't think that's going to translate well. You gotta think they need each and every rep because I know that even we do and they just don't have the talent that we do across the board. But to each his own I suppose.
Guessing it has something to do with conditioning and / or familiarity with the playbook. I'm sure those guys are doing base conditioning before they are allowed to join the team activities.
Whether this is the right way to go about it or not - I'm concerned he's attempting build basic football skills and accountability within that program (i.e., having freshman report for summer sessions) - something that hasn't been there since the late 90's. Hopefully he won't be able to turn things around and is run out of town but this is something that hasn't been seen in c-ville for decades.
That all seems like a good way to instill some discipline in a program but he is sacrificing a whole hell of a lot by doing it. At the rate their current recruiting pace, they might crack the top 60 this year and I don't think they managed that last year. Next year they lose a lot and are going to be even worse, imo. I find it really difficult to believe that program gets out of dumpster fire status at that rate regardless of coaching approach.
Agree that those kids are getting a rude awakening from what (who) they signed onto - maybe he's trying to blow it all up before rebuilding. They probably assume that it cannot get much worse than the last 3 years.
That's my concern, though. For the next 2 years he will have overhyped recruits with no discipline. If he is able to stay there despite bad W-L records (and if TimeCop could, anyone will) then he'll have underhyped recruits with good discipline (and probably a few 3-4* guys) which is what Tech built itself on. I do NOT like that scenario.
Let us all pray that the typical Who-itis symptom of unrealistic expectations and snobbery gets him the boot before he can do anything too successful. In the meantime, let's remind our guys to wear their cups when we face 'em.
"he'll have underhyped recruits with good discipline (and probably a few 3-4* guys)"
I agree that he will try to do this to replicate what he had at BYU. But I do not think that he will be as successful, since his under-hyped recruits will no longer have the advantage of being in their mid 20s when they actually hit the field. I am also curious if he will be able to carry-over his pipeline to Mormon Pacific Islanders that has netted him a lot of his better players.
Make no mistake, LOLUVa under Mendenhall may not be as good at football as his BYU teams, but they won't be the inept pansies that we are used to.
Could definitely be conditioning or playbook stuff. Could also be that some kids didn't have good grades, too. Could be a failed drug test. It's kinda cryptic saying they hadn't qualified for practice yet, but I think we can assume there is a new set of standards Bronco is trying to get going, but some guys haven't adjusted to yet. Sky's the limit on what 'qualified for practice' could include. Could be injury too.
Must be poor free throw shooters.
Airball a foul shot, and your teammates still come to congratulate you. Really?
"Hey now, at least the free throw was on target, and with our strength of schedule, it's understandable how we came up a bit short. You just wait, this missed free throw shows just how close we are to winning with a bunch of 2-star recruits."
-A UVA fan, probably
[ Helping hand from the Moderator. Joe has given me the power! FYI, if your image link doesn't end in an actual image file extension like .jpg, .png, .gif, etc. it's not going to work. ]
The picture isn't showing for me, but your sig lines get the point across perfectly.
Damn, Bronco is not pulling any punches when talking about how embarrassing the program was under Mike London.
That is how he trains his kids to fight.
Like "a boy named Sue," except they're all Sue...
Bronco with the math skills. Didn't have a third, but had about two thirds.
Just wait till he starts taking timeouts
You'd be better off letting your freshman practice against other freshman or walk ons than not practicing at all wouldn't you? If it were me or my son I'd be WTF? I can't understand how this helps. It's one thing to install discipline it's another to cut off your nose to spite your face.
I just realized:
Bronco doesn't think his players are disciplined enough to do warm-ups (see Spring
GameFestival) or Yoga.On second thought...
GOOD CALL, BRONC! GOOD CALL!
EDIT: don't TKP past your bedtime, kids.
It's amusing that at Saturday's practice, they "earned" extra practice time. In other words, the beatings will continue until morale improves.
TIMEOUT!
OK, I tried to read the article with an open mind. I read what the coaches said. Back to my usual comment on LOLUVa football, " Are you shitting me?" Maybe they will be successful under the new regime, however, I sure would not my kid to undergo that. We all should be grateful we have Coach Fuente.
I totally agree. However, if you were Bronco, coming into the dumpster fire that is a Mike London run program, you'd probably need to take some drastic measures as well. I mean, these kids are used to incredibly low standards. The freshmen were recruited by someone who gets through a 4-8 season and celebrates because it's not the 2-10 he pulled off two years earlier. They come in thinking just their presence will elevate the program and that's not going to cut it at a P5 program.
Anyway, I guess my point is that I'll make fun of this and it should be used against them in recruiting, but I think it will probably be good for their program in the long run.
I give Bronco 3 years before he sees there is no hope. These two personaalities just don't mix well.
I can understand with that "world class" UVA education Marques Hagans recieved, he would confuse "contaminated" with "indoctrinated". I mean, they both end in an "inated".
I guess they're just happy he didn't say "urinated."
I have said it before, I'll say it again. UVA is like a barrel of apples. You can put all the shiny new however highly ranked apples you want into that barrel, but eventually most of them will rot. The barrel looks great from the outside, but is "contaminated" on the inside, with hubris, conceit, and perceived elitism. Yes, Bronco may be able to eventually clean up some of that rot, but you can't get it all, it is institutionalized at UVA, and as we all know, it only takes one bad apple...
As fun as it is to hate on UVA, Bronco is building a brand new football culture there. I see no real problem with it. He's going to do a fine job there if he gets any talent, which is the biggest question mark IMO.
Yeah, I think you're exactly right.
While we're on the topic of Hooville, anyone see the article on Andrew Brown? I couldn't help but shake my head while reading it knowing the talent from VA that has been wasted at UVA because they bought the snake oil London was selling.
Link
London was a great hype man, until the game started. I love walking around in my t-shirt with the LOLUVA getting bucked off around cville.
Maybe we should use some of that Olympic mosquito repellant to protect our players from getting contaminated by the "whoaaaa" virus.
Wasn't sure where to leave this, so I'm leaving this here. On the radio this morning they had a "Did you Know" segment that I thought pertained to loluva. They said; Did you know that scientists have discovered that the human taste buds can't tell the difference between Zima and zebra urine?
Yep, just gonna leave that tid-bit of information right here. Have fun.
Having never tried either of them, I sure wouldn't know, but somehow, I'm not surprised.
seems apt, scientists discovered long ago that the human eye cannot distinguish between a douchebag and a wahoo.
Except all of one thing is the other. But not all of the other is the one thing.
this was exactly what I was thinking when writing it, but the joke was right there so I went for it. +1 though
Just had an epiphany. If you had no talent on your team and wanted to run off as many players as possible to free up scholarships, what could be more devastating to a player than being told that they aren't good enough to even practice with the team ? Makes perfect sense now.
Except the guys you are running off are freshman, and if you didn't think they were any good you could have pulled their scholarship offers in December when he got hired, or encouraged them to look around.
Maybe he didnt realise how bad they were in December
Dear Bronco:
Let me Google that for you...
Ding, ding, ding. Give that man a cigar !
I don't foresee him drawing in too much talent in the near future, so he might as buckle down and work with what he has. loluva is quite far from his normal recruiting scheme/ideas, while I think he is a good coach I doubt he will able to field the talent to be successful anytime in the near future.
IMO he is a sharp contrast from Mike London, he can coach well and will have trouble recruiting. If UVA sticks with him for 5+ years he may succeed, but the deck is stacked against him.
I could also see him burning them into the ground. At byu your freshman are 25 you don't need to recruit well theyre bigger and more physical. At uva hes not blessed with the same advantage. If he doesnt recruit well the talent level is going to suck. Hes probably got more talent on the roster now then he might ever bring in. Don't forget there are several 5 star guys on that roster and some solid classes. But I dont think the roster is going to improve much any time soon